How To Implement Your Kaizen Event Successfully

Business901 Podcast Transcription Implementing Lean Marketing Systems standard work and we go point by point, kind of bus stop by bus stop, and we check. I'm checking to make sure that these people are working in accordance to standard work. So, where's the standard work that I can look at, and I can do a comparison? What's the max level? What happens when I hit the max level? So on and so forth. So, you really need to think through that and test it in order to know that it will stand up. In the end, it's really got to be the leaders that are executing the leader's standard work. Whether it's supervisors, team managers, all the way up, if you are in an industrial setting then the value stream manager, even the plant manager if they're not the value stream manager, they have to be involved. They have to hold people accountable and make it work. Joe: In your book you talk about training with TWI, Training within Industry a lot. Do you think that's an old tool? Is that still applicable today? Mark: Yes, it's definitely an old tool. It's kind of the classic U.S. approach. We develop something really cool. And the training within the industry was really World War II, the three programs (job methods, job relations, and job instructions) for a supervisor. And it was a major process, maybe even call it a system, by which we increased and improved our productivity during World War II, as a lot of the working folk that were making stuff were overseas fighting. So, the new workforce really found this extremely helpful. Within that was job methods, one of the three, and that gets into really.in that situation it was the supervisors that were doing this. How to Implement your Kaizen Event Successfully Copyright Business901

Business901 Podcast Transcription Implementing Lean Marketing Systems In Kaizen, we do this together as a team. We go through this journey, but really direct observation. Not to oversimplify here, job methods talks about eliminating, combining, rearranging, and simplifying the processes. We do that. Then, after World War II we exported it to Japan, who was in a pretty tough situation, and we forget about it all. So, there's the job methods piece and then there is the job instruction piece which, when we have a standard work, is an excellent tool by which we can help train people so that they really understand, hands-on, what the new standard work or standardized work really is and what the key points are. Joe: When you are really looking at sustainability you're looking at implementing standard work, implementing the correct training within the TWI type approach of implementation. Its' new, and that's what will sustain the product. With the different PDCA cycles and. Mark: The lean management systems are extremely important. So a great reference will be David Mann's book, "Creating A Lean Culture." He just came out with his second edition. An excellent reference for folks to look at. You've got to make that system your own. It requires a huge cultural shift throughout the organization, not the least of which is the managers themselves, because, many times, they understand standard work is for people doing the work. But, guess what: standard work is also for the leaders, especially around the SPCA, the Standardized Do Check Act. And another thing for sustainability too, you should have post event audits to make sure that the Kaizen newspaper, kind of those left over todos, have been executed. Over and above kind of lean management system to make sure to make sure stuff has been closed How to Implement your Kaizen Event Successfully Copyright Business901

Business901 Podcast Transcription Implementing Lean Marketing Systems out properly. There's a bunch of different things that can be done, but those are some very straightforward, basic, but not easy things that should be done to ensure sustainability. Joe: I think about Six Sigma, the DMAIC process; they spend a lot of time with a control section and what to do about that. When I see people in Lean, I don't see as much emphasis placed on that, which is really the sustainability portion of it. Do I read that wrong or am I mistaken about that? Mark: Well, I think your observation is correct about people are not being very good at the sustainability side, and I've got a Six Sigma black belt, so I certainly understand the DMAIC process. So, the way it's taught is proper, the way of Lean, the way it's taught, is proper. It really falls down to people's understanding, ownership, leadership, that the control phase that SPCA phase is really where people don't do it. It is hard; there is a rigor; it never goes away. So if you think about a leader standard of work, as you develop essentially new systems: new standard of work, new linkages between process use, again, as aided in telling normal versus abnormal bi-visual controls. It's something that is continuously developing as you make improvements and expand and develop the system. Because most systems are driven, managed by humans, that means they're going to decay quite quickly unless you ensure the standards are being followed and making sure they're sufficient. And if they're not sufficient, obviously we have an opportunity to do further improvements. Obviously this is not to say that standards are locked in forever. That gets back into the principle-driven Kaizen. We should follow the standard of work until we make improvements, and that becomes the new standard of work. And I think if we got back into How to Implement your Kaizen Event Successfully Copyright Business901

Business901 Podcast Transcription Implementing Lean Marketing Systems the core principles of Lean, this notion of sustainability and approach for doing it, it's there. One of my jokes is: "We got some folks out there practicing lean without a license." We learn by doing but what happens, a lot of times, people go through a Kaizen process, Kaizen events, and they won't do really well on sustainability. So guess what? Next time someone talks about doing a Kaizen event, it’s like, "Uh, those don't work." The folks that you pulled in and worked real hard and had a great time developing improved process use think back, and they go, "Hey, I spent 50, 60 hours that week. I worked my tail off, and you guys didn't sustain anything. Your leaders didn't hold anybody accountable. You guys didn't follow through, why would I want to do another Kaizen event?" Joe: I think that goes back to a little bit, Mark, and expand on that while we talk about sustainability here. As Kaizen and Lean have taken hold in the professional services and office environment and health care, you pull a lot of people into a Kaizen event to make it successful but there's not necessarily a leader. When you're on the shop floor or on a manufacturing floor there is a real structure on how to implement that Kaizen event, already a structure on how you're going to implement something. In Healthcare, everybody has different bosses and different commitments. In Six Sigma, you've always got that black belt or green belt. There's a structure there. And in Lean, after a Kaizen event, I'm not sure I understand the structure. Is that an observation that's way off base or is that correct? Mark: Well I think in Six Sigma you have black belts, certainly, there for the project to shepherd it through and facilitate the main process, but again, in the end, they still go How to Implement your Kaizen Event Successfully Copyright Business901

Business901 Podcast Transcription Implementing Lean Marketing Systems away. They still go off into another project; their focus gets diverted. There should be, in Lean and in any type of thing, be owners of the process. When we look at the Kaizen event from a pre-event planning perspective, even if we go before that, the strategic portion with strategy deployment or the value stream analysis, you want to identify a value stream manager: an accountable being who's going to drive that value stream improvement plan and execute that and also achieve the measurable targets. If you don't have that, it's very difficult to be successful in Lean. When we're talking about Kaizen events, it's the team leaders, the co-leaders; they're obviously very important people. They play very important roles in the Kaizen event itself. Often the team leader, you don't want them to be directly from the area because there might be some bias introduced. But certainly the co-leader should live in that area, and they should be helping to sustain. My rule of thumb in picking teams, so you want them a third from within the process, a third split between upstream and downstream and a third roughly, fresh eyes. So you should have at least a third of the folks that participate in the Kaizen Event be residents, people within the process after the event. So they have a responsibility to kind of evangelize and support and help sustain. So that's a major element. Now I think you hit the nail on the head, certainly from a health care perspective - totally different culture. They're not trained to think in terms of process owners, or more appropriately, value stream owners. How to Implement your Kaizen Event Successfully Copyright Business901

Business901 Podcast Transcription Implementing Lean Marketing Systems If you look at a physician they're largely focused, even if they're site chief for example, I mean if they're practicing medicine, if they have a full panel on it, they'll worry primarily about their panel. They work with their natural work team which is their nurse and medical assistant and so on and so forth. They're not used to managing off the system and holding people accountable for process performance and a process adherence perspective. So the culture needs to change. There's new language, and new disciplines that need to get introduced into that culture, and it's not easy. It can be done. There are folks out there who are doing it well, but it's definitely hard. Transactional stuff, on the continuum I think it's probably in the middle of where healthcare is and the industrial side. But that's not to say even the industrial folks get this right. Joe: I want to get back to your book because there are three different areas I really wanted to touch upon. I found it very interesting that when you took a look at the book, you broke it down, I think, into three parts. But the interesting thing is the biggest part and the part that you spent the time on was the standard work. You explained the follow through and the execution of it. Did you do that intentionally? Mark: What, to spend the bulk of the book on the standard workpiece? Joe: Yeah, well large parts of it, yes. Mark: Right, right. Yes. I mean, I think back to when I started learning from a Lean Sensei, and that was 1994, '95. I just remember sitting at his elbow, following him How to Implement your Kaizen Event Successfully Copyright Business901

Business901 Podcast Transcription Implementing Lean Marketing Systems everywhere, listening to everything he said, and jotting stuff down. I had a ton of notes. And I thought, "I've been through a few Kaizen events now, I think I know how to do this." Right, that was really off. Then I go in the next Kaizen event with my Sensei, and I'm like, "Oh, I thought that step two was this." I found pretty quickly that it's a lot deeper than that. There's definitely underlying principles that you always need to maintain and sustain. There is standard work, but at the same time, it's kind of a loose type fit, although there are some things that you definitely can't mess up on. So, for example, definitely your Kaizen events need to be pulled, right? You can't just be pushing them on folks. The old tool-driven Kaizen, they have to matter, and they should be tied. Like I said before, diametric analysis or A-tree or process improvement plans or whatever, there needs to be a context there. You need to pre-plan, easy for me to say, properly. So we talked about team selection, and we talked about scope and targets and so on and so forth. We talk about logistics, communication, which people end up messing up time and time again. Just think in terms of, "Hey, the more effective people are, the more intense, the more frequent, and the more personal the communication needs to be." One of the major things I talk about in the book from a lean leaders perspective, they should be doing the change management thing. There are some great models out there like Carter's model of change management that we seem to just kind of forget. Maybe because it's so simple, we just kind of blow it off, I don't know. But now we get to the actual Kaizen event, and we're talking about things like kick-off meetings. We're talking about a healthy alignment team leader meetings, plus delta How to Implement your Kaizen Event Successfully Copyright Business901

Business901 Podcast Transcription Implementing Lean Marketing Systems analyzes. Very quick things each morning to really find out what's working well for the team and what could be improved relative to work strategy and communication and things like that. And then there's a kind of storyline that's inherent in the Kaizen event itself that follows that kind of plan, do, check, act. And if we process and if we get off of it, we're really at risk of cause jumping, of implementing unnecessary stuff. It would definitely be in the category of waste or muda. So we're training people how to think from a plan, do, check, act perspective as well as introducing them to standardize, do, check, act. We expect to make significant improvements at a Kaizen Event, but we're also trying to engage and develop the workforce at the same time. For us to kind of bastardize the process by, not following standard work that we should be following in a Kaizen event, we're teaching them incorrectly. We're teaching them bad habits. When we try to get to that daily Kaizen type of phase in our organization, it's going to be really hard. There are things that we need to follow. And there are certain tools for direct observation. There's not observation forms really, spaghetti charts, the application of effect diagrams and histograms and things like that. We're not super prescriptive: "Here's a checklist you're going to do A, B, C, D, E. You're going to do these forms for this one and this in every Kaizen event." They're different. Sometimes you're going to do process mapping to get an understanding of the current reality, so on and so forth. How to Implement your Kaizen Event Successfully Copyright Business901

Business901 Podcast Transcription Implementing Lean Marketing Systems So I really wanted people to understand what that standard work is and what it means. It also gets into things like work strategy. This book is largely written for those people in the Kaizen Promotion Office. Those people who help facilitate this process, as well as Lean leaders; they need to understand how important this is to moving up that curve from a tool driven to a system driven to a principle-driven Kaizen culture. Lastly, is the follow-ups piece. We have to have rigor on that, and if we get sloppy, we end up wasting our time, unfortunately. Joe: The first thing that I noticed about the book was it was spiral bound. And the question I'm going to ask you is: "Why is it called a field book?" My Perception of it was the fact that when I look at this spiral bound, to me, that seemed initially that there is a field book. That was my first inclination because I can open the thing up, can fold it around and lay it next to me. I don't have to read it. I can put it next to me and use it. It just jumped out at me as a field book, and that was the reason I picked it up. I mean someone had it, and I went over and looked at it because it just struck me. Why did you write a field book and what gives you the right to call it a field book, I guess? Mark: Very good questions. The first thing I want to say is I've got three children and they all looked at it, and they all go, "It's not a real book if it's got the spiral." I had the option to go with a hardcover but I hoped that people would bring it along, make it dogeared, write in the margins, although the margins are dead, but write all over it and use it. There's definitely the lay-flat applicability to it. Might have been sexier looking had it been hardcover but I think the spiral bound is the way to go. Why did I write it? Part of it was explained before. I was at the elbow of the Sensei trying to record how do you do this, How to Implement your Kaizen Event Successfully Copyright Business901

Business901 Podcast Transcription Implementing Lean Marketing Systems really looking for a cookbook. It's not a cookbook by any stretch, but what I wanted to do was communicate how to plan, execute, and follow through in Kaizen events effectively. Have effective Kaizen events and within that context of Lean business system, have Lean leaders understand what they have to do to make this thing work and how to develop the Lean function, the Kaizen promotion office. That's really why I wrote it, selfishly; I'm sick of explaining this stuff to people. I'd rather have them focus on truly implementing Lean and Kaizen events are really a vehicle to do that. I'd rather people get an understanding of the vehicle, so think of it maybe as a car. I want you to learn how to drive the car so we can get somewhere. Joe: Because, like I said, the spiral bound books always catch my eyes because I think of books as using them. I learned a long time ago; I'm trying to think who.It was in the book an author who said the highest compliment, that an author can ever receive, is to see one of his books looking like a rag with dog-eared pages and written in margins and underlined. That's the greatest compliment you can give someone. And I never understand because the spiral bound book lends itself so much to do that, where the others don't. They're more pristine. I want to use them on the shop floor; I want to carry them into a meeting. I've always preferred that, that always catches my eye when I see them. Gemba Tales is the name of your blog. How did you use Gemba Tales within your book, though? Mark: Well, there's almost 40 Gemba Tales. They're little stories that are interest first throughout the book. I wanted people to see or get a feel for real-life applications; How to Implement your Kaizen Event Successfully Copyright Business901

Business901 Podcast Transcription Implementing Lean Marketing Systems sometimes successful, sometimes unsuccessful. Give it a more human feel. Also, a book completely on Lean and Kaizen can be pretty darn dry. The Lean community is a great community. It's full of people who are willing to share and mentor others and along with it was a great opportunity to have some folks, some really good, knowledgeable teachers, sensei's, to kind of share some of their experienc

pejoratives like Kaizen in a box, kamikaze Kaizen, Kaizen paint by numbers, popcorn Kaizen. And it's true that Kaizen events many times have been misapplied by people who miss the big picture from a lean perspective or even continuous recruitment. So what I wanted to do was bring people back to the context that Kaizen event should be within,